Full Funnel Growth Skills Map

Unlock your Growth potential with those 5 essential skills 🧠

Feb 28, 2023

⏱️ Read time = 5 minutes

Hello, this is Pierre-Jean from The Growth Mind 👋

Today we’re going to talk about the Full Funnel Growth Skills Map: the essential skill set for Growth folks who want to have maximum impact within a Start-up/Scale-up.

As the start-up ecosystem becomes increasingly mature, the need for unique Growth profiles with a Full Funnel vision is becoming more important.

Full Funnel Growth profiles are rare, but they are probably the ones that will have the most impact and future in the start-up ecosystem in the years to come.

I have been thinking a lot about the skill set that a Full Funnel Growth profile should have in recent weeks, with a focus on profiles working in start-ups/scale-ups. Here is the result ⬇️

The majority of Growth profiles are focused on acquisition and can be compared to a sort of Marketer 2.0, with a more technical and digital background than a "classic" marketer. But few profiles have a real Full Funnel understanding of Growth.

A Full Funnel Growth profile is a hybrid profile, at the crossroads of Marketing and Product, capable of generating growth by tackling the entire customer journey, from acquisition to monetization, through activation, retention, and referral. By identifying opportunities to optimize each step and making long-term strategic decisions.

These profiles are a gold mine for scale-ups that need hybrid profiles with a sharp business sense.

The playing field for a Full Funnel Growth profile is therefore vast. The accompanying Skills Map is just as vast.

Let's dive into each category of skills together 👇

🔭 Business & Growth strategic thinking

A Full Funnel Growth profile must be able to think strategically and long-term. In a mature ecosystem, gone are the hacks and quick strategies that grow a metric at the expense of sustainable and exponential growth.

Developing a Business/Growth strategic mindset is a must-have tp:

Build a Roadmap and Growth projects aligned with the company's ambitions, priority KPIs, and vision. Knowing where to concentrate efforts allows for maximum impact.
Identify Growth trends and opportunities.
Understand the market in which the company operates and be aware of its present and future evolutions.
Create Funnels and Growth Loops that tackle the entire customer journey to support the company's growth.

This skill set is probably the least tangible/technical but is essential for making the right decisions and developing high-level strategies by having a full understanding of your environment.

📊 Data analysis & interpretation

Growth = Data.

To make the right decisions and develop Growth strategies, knowing how to collect, analyze, and interpret data is essential.

Without going into the role of a Data Analyst, a Full Funnel Growth profile must know how to:

Identify the main KPIs that need to be analyzed and optimized: choosing the right KPIs allows us to focus on the most impactful actions.
Interpret data: many people collect data, but few analyze it to make concrete decisions. Doing it in the right way will be a game changer.
Master analytics tools: knowing how to use analytics tools (Google Analytics, Amplitude, Adjust...) and data visualization (Looker, Tableau...) allows for conducting analyses autonomously. Understanding how to analyze cohorts, for example, is crucial for creating activation and retention strategies.
Create predictive models and forecasts: to understand where he wants to go and what he needs to do to achieve his goals, a Full Funnel Growth profile must understand the potential impact of their actions. To do this, it is crucial to size up growth opportunities by creating forecasts based on coherent assumptions drawn from data analysis.

🤖 Product & Tech knowledge

A Full Funnel Growth Manager must be able to collaborate effectively with Tech and Product teams to implement the necessary actions for the company's growth.

Activation & Retention: These two AARRR funnel steps are often underrated by most Growth Managers, as they are intimately linked to the product but must be optimized by data-oriented Growth profiles. Improving a few percentage points of your activation and/or retention can have a huge impact on your revenue.
Product Management: Collaborating with product managers is essential for experimenting in your product. They are the people with the best product knowledge within a company and your first allies for experimenting on activation and retention. The success of experiments is often conditioned by their support.
UX & Design: Understanding the basics of user experience and design allows you to know where to experiment and add a qualitative layer to what the data allows you to see. A good understanding of UX will be useful in identifying the reasons for a drop in conversion, for example.
Tech knowledge: Just like PMs, tech teams are your allies. Understanding how they work and their main challenges will help you get their support. Some Tech notions will be of great help in ensuring good communication.

💌 Marketing & Communication

A Full Funnel Growth Manager must possess strong Marketing and Communication skills to identify the right channels and develop acquisition strategies capable of filling the top of the funnel.

Among the essential Marketing skills, we find:

Content & SEO: an essential brick at a time when more and more companies are looking to grow organically through content.
Paid Ads: mastering, or at least knowing how the main advertising networks (Meta, Google, TikTok) and their algorithms work is a real asset. The creative part is also important to consider.
CRM: CRM strategies (outbound, email marketing, automation, etc.) are an effective way to boost the acquisition but also engagement of existing users.
PR: creating viral strategies and relying on the media to grow organically.
Copywriting: probably the most important skill in this category. It will be useful at all moments of the Customer Journey, as soon as you push visible communication to your users. Knowing how to push the right message, to the right audience, allows you to multiply the impact of all Growth strategies.

🧠 User psychology

Understanding the psychology and deep motivations of your users/customers is a determining skill to develop your Growth strategy.

Empathic mindset: Developing empathy allows you to understand your users. Why do they use my product? How can I help them in their daily lives? An empathic mindset allows you to put yourself in the shoes of those who use your product. Having this mindset is a prerequisite for being great in the following 3 disciplines.
Customer Experience: By putting yourself in your users' shoes and living the experience you offer them, you will also be able to identify areas for improvement as well as what works and does not radically need to be optimized.
User research and feedback: Knowing how to question, listen to your users, and take into account their feedback is a superpower. Conducting good user research is the basis for building a good product/a good feature.
Jobs to be done: AKA what your customers are trying to accomplish with your product. In the example of BlaBlaCar, a driver is looking to travel from point A to point B without breaking the bank. That's his job to be done. Identifying what your customers deeply want to accomplish with your product will allow you to focus on the key features of your product and adapt your marketing messages.

The Full Funnel Growth Skills Map aims to help you unlock your Growth potential. It’s also a framework that can be used to evaluate candidates applying for a Growth position in a startup.
By having a complete skills panel, a Growth profile will be able to have a strong and long terme impact on the entire funnel. Way stronger than a profile only focused on acquisition.
This framework is, of course, non-exhaustive: certain soft skills such as communication, problem-solving mindset, or adaptability are not included but are essential for any position.

That’s all for today. See you in 2 weeks for the next edition of The Growth Mind 👋

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